Otter snorts. “I don’t think they actually have a rendering plant at each McDonald’s, Kid. It would detract from the ball pit in the play area, I would think.”
“Bear likes playing in ball pits, or at least that’s what I’ve heard—”
“Tyson,” I warn. “We keep it clean now, remember? Child Prot
ective Services and all that. Wouldn’t want them to take you away and put you in a run-down haunted orphanage just because you couldn’t watch your mouth.”
He looks scandalized. “You just said bullshit!”
“No, I didn’t. I said Bolshevists.”
He cocks his head at me. “What’s that?”
Shit, I have no fucking clue. I just heard that word on TV a few days ago on the History Channel while flipping through trying to find Maury Povich. I glance at Otter for help, and he grins at me before turning back to the Kid. “They were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in the early 1900s.” Exactly. That’s exactly what I meant. I totally knew that. Maury Povich had been a paternity episode. Those are my favorites. The guy was obviously the baby daddy, even though he said he wasn’t. What a liar.
“Really,” the Kid says dryly. “Bear randomly dropped Marxism into the conversation? You should have gone with something a little bit more believable. Like how he was talking about toast, or how much he likes sunshine because it makes his insides feel warm.”
“You better hope you get scholarships,” I growl at him. “Because I’m not paying for you to go to college anywhere since you’re acting like a jerk.”
“Maybe I’ll just find a sugar daddy, like you did,” he retorts.
Otter laughs. I don’t think it’s funny. At all. On so many levels. “He’s not my sugar daddy!”
“Of course not,” the Kid placates soothingly.
“Eat your food,” I demand. “We’ve got to get a move on, especially if you have to go fix your hair again.”
“Er…,” he says. “About that.” He almost looks embarrassed. Or shy.
“Now what?” I sigh.
The Kid stirs his granola, thinking hard for a moment. Then his forehead scrunches up, and he looks up at me. All-Important Question Time.
“Derrick?”
“Yes, Tyson.”
“You know how I’ve been doing better, right?”
Huh. Not his usual type of question, but a question nonetheless. “You have been, Kid,” I tell him quietly. “And I’m very proud of you.”
He nods. “And you know how I’ve agreed to go to therapy even though I think it’s so unfair, and I’m not crazy even though you seem to think I am?”
Ah. Now I get it. He wants to ask me for something. “Right. Unfair.
Crazy. Therapy. Go on.”
“And you know how I’m nine and one-quarter, which is almost practically ten?”
“Tyson, the quicker you make your point, the quicker you’ll have my decision.”
“I can’t wait until I get a little brother,” he grumbles. “The hierarchy in this house will change, that’s for darn sure.”
Of course, he says this right when I’m taking a sip of coffee, which causes me to inhale and choke, and I spray it out of my nose and mouth back into my cup. I glare at the Kid as I wipe off my face, and he stares right back, as if in challenge. Nuh-uh. There’s no way I’m going to touch this one. First I have thoughts about… marriage (precipitated, of course, by Ty’s insistence and my apparent undying fantasy from hell to have a wedding on a beach—talk about lame) and now the Kid wants a baby brother? I can’t even be bothered to correct him that it wouldn’t be his brother, but a nephew, but the lines are so blurred about who we are, that I don’t think it matters. Not that it’s going to happen. What the fuck is going on in this house?
I turn to look at Otter for help, expecting to see him filled with the same incredulity as me, the same expression of unbridled horror, but it’s not there.
Of course it’s not. What’s there is a thoughtful expression, one I don’t expect after hearing the Kid’s words. Otter’s watching Tyson, and he smiles quietly, but there’s something behind the gold-green, something that I can’t quite make out, whether by choice or not, I don’t know. He must feel my eyes on him because he turns to me and catches my eye, and I still don’t know what I’m looking at, but it scares the royal crap out of me. This is one thing that needs to be shelved for later. Quite possibly forever. I know we’ve been through a lot and that I’ve already bought my ticket to the forever train (metaphors are like crack—bet you can’t use it just once!), but that doesn’t mean I want to be traveling in the family cabin. Besides, how would we even do that? Would we like adopt an Asian baby like famous people do?